


forebearance

by ilgaksu



Series: myth au [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Lev is Icarus, M/M, Trans!Yaku, Yaku is both Andromeda and Perseus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 08:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5327216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’ll never tell you that part. They don’t want you to know that part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	forebearance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ryonello](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ryonello).



 

Here’s the thing they’ll never tell you about Icarus. His father turned to him, Icarus, his golden boy, his one and only, and he said:

_Do not fly too close to the sun, my child. You will become a cautionary tale._

And he also said:

_Do not fly too low, son of mine. Do not underestimate yourself, son of mine. For if you fly too low, you will surely drown._

But they’ll never tell you that part. They don’t want you to know that part.

*

When you first meet Lev, you’re expecting horror. You’re schooling your face for it. The boy who fell from the sky, hot wax on his shoulder blades; you’re expecting scar tissue. You want to see how the gods made him pay in flesh and blood.  You’ll see it when he turns his head, the scar that curls around one ear, red and white and molten, melding into the hairline and slicking messily down his neck, pooling into his shoulder. You’ll wonder if his hair was set alight. It was.

Lev is a study in metallic: the bronze of his skin, the glint of the scars, the silver of his hair and sea-green glimmer of his eyes. It’s as though all the gold was leeched from him when he fell, you’d think, until he smiles. Until he smiles, and it looks like he managed to take a bite out of the sun first.

When Lev came to on the sand, Yaku remembers, after he’d coughed the seawater out of his lungs and blinked the salt from his eyes, he’d laughed. The burns, fresh and doused in the same salt, must have been agony, and Lev laughed and laughed and laughed. Yaku had stared silently, struck dumb by the harsh glint of Lev’s stupid fucking smile.

“I want to try again,” he’d said, and passed clean out, and Yaku -

Yaku, five years strong as a divine hero, five years strong with the gods on his side, with auburn eyes, a spine of steel, twenty kills under his belt; Yaku picked up the boy from the boiling sand and took him home.  

Lev stayed unconscious for three days. Lev cried in his sleep. Lev murmured deliriously about prison walls and the blue of the sky and a horror of dying in the cold.  

Yaku polished his knives. Yaku listened. Yaku thought _who are you? what is your name? why did I carry you? what have you done?_

And Yaku washed the sun out of Lev’s skin.

*

When they fuck, Yaku feels like his heart is paper under Lev’s hands. Yaku has five years strong as a divine hero, five years strong with the gods on his side. Yaku has auburn eyes, a spine of steel, twenty kills under his belt; Yaku carried Lev home from the sun and washed the salt out, and yet Lev’s hands make him feel so small, and it pisses Yaku off. 

Every time, he opens his mouth to say something, his hand curled around the back of Lev’s neck, the whine of Lev’s mouth at his jaw, the curl of Lev’s hands grounding and wrenching at his hips. Every time, he opens his mouth.

“Let me take care of you, Morisuke,” Lev says, the heat and the silver and the _heat_ of him, and when Yaku licks into his mouth he swears he can taste the salt still.

And every time, Yaku gives in.

*

There’s faint old scars circling Yaku’s wrists, silvery in noon light and slightly raised. Lev likes to run his thumb over and along them as they talk, soothing and absentminded, and sometimes his grip gets too tight, and sometimes Yaku pulls away complaining about it, but more often than not they endure. They both endure. It’s an acquired taste, endurance, but Yaku looks at the arrogant slide of Lev’s laugh across his face and thinks: I, too, can still acquire.  

Years ago, they took Yaku and bound his hands and feet and left him on a rock for a monster’s appetiser. The story goes that a hero appeared to rescue him, a stranger in a strange land, blessed by the gods. They won’t tell you that Yaku, hung naked from stone like a slab of meat, wanted to live. They won’t tell you Yaku was carried into the water by his father’s servants but that he carried himself out; they made up the stranger part. It’s easier to be sold on the tale of a stranger then realise you never knew your protagonist all along, that they were capable of inner worlds and internal resilience you could only imagine.  

(Here’s a secret: Yaku wishes someone else had come when he shouted for help. Yaku wishes he hadn’t had to carry himself.)

So they’ll never tell you that part. They don’t want you to know that part.

*

Lev’s not the only one with scars: you don’t stay alive long enough to see them raise statues in your name without taking a few hits. And Yaku doesn’t stay down after the first round. He gets back up. He gets back up. There’ll always be more monsters to fight, more medals to win, more statues to raise up. There’ll always be more hostages. The world is ugly like that, and boys with soft skin get sent to the Minotaur; girls with soft eyes get chained up for sea-witches; anyone outside or in between gets written out. You play the games between the parentheses of what your ballad allows and if you hear it enough times, the descant stops sounding like shackles.

Five years strong, twenty kills. The scars fade. When Lev thrashes awake, babbling about _father, far away, freedom_ ; Yaku kisses his forehead roughly and gets up to get spiced wine, presses it into Lev’s hands and yanks an arm about Lev’s shoulders. _You’re not on Crete; you’re not in the Labyrinth; look, let’s watch the sunrise together. Look, your skin_ _shows you survived. You are more than what anyone can make of you._

It’s simple homespun magic, unfinished and mortal, but it lulls an unfinished and mortal boy back into sleep, the weight of his head on Yaku’s shoulder and the lolling cup of dropped wine dangling from his hand. The wine soaks the edges of the blanket. Yaku lets it. Yaku waits for the sun.

 

 


End file.
